There is no doubt that the two in­ci­dents in­volv­ing ATR air­craft op­er­at­ed by Caribbean Air­lines Ltd (CAL) with­in a five-day pe­ri­od would have caused sig­nif­i­cant con­cern among pas­sen­gers of the air­line, as well as the wider fly­ing pub­lic of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the south­ern Caribbean.

On Jan­u­ary 22, an ATR 72-600 land­ed at the ANR Robin­son In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port in To­ba­go, af­ter com­plet­ing the short flight from Bar­ba­dos. A few min­utes af­ter taxi­ing to its park­ing po­si­tion, a mem­ber of the ground crew no­ticed one of the air­craft’s two nose wheels was miss­ing. The air­craft was with­drawn from ser­vice, the nose wheel re­placed and the pas­sen­gers were trans­ferred to an­oth­er air­craft des­tined for Trinidad.

Five days lat­er, an­oth­er ATR 72-600 air­craft was fly­ing from To­ba­go to Trinidad when it was dis­cov­ered that “one of the en­gines ba­si­cal­ly ran out of fu­el, which caused the cap­tain to make the manda­to­ry an­nounce­ment in ac­cor­dance with Civ­il Avi­a­tion reg­u­la­tions to the pas­sen­gers that they should get in­to the po­si­tion that is rec­om­mend­ed for an emer­gency land­ing,” as Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert told the Sen­ate on Wednes­day.

Un­like last week’s in­ci­dent, CAL ini­ti­at­ed an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to Mon­day’s oc­cur­rence, which would have caused pan­ic among the pas­sen­gers.

In the lat­ter in­ci­dent, a pi­lot and two tech­ni­cians were with­drawn from ac­tive du­ty and the air­craft re­moved from ser­vice, pend­ing a de­ter­mi­na­tion of the root cause of the prob­lem.

In launch­ing the in­ves­ti­ga­tion, CAL has re­spond­ed to the sec­ond in­ci­dent in ac­cor­dance with in­ter­na­tion­al avi­a­tion stan­dards. The air­line must al­so en­sure that the probe is thor­ough, quick and in­volves all of the par­ties con­cerned, in­clud­ing the air­craft’s man­u­fac­tur­er.

At the end of the in­ves­ti­ga­to­ry process, the re­sult­ing re­port must be laid in Par­lia­ment, so that it can be con­sumed and di­gest­ed by the air­line’s var­i­ous publics.

The air­line is 88.06 per cent owned by Cor­po­ra­tion Sole, the en­ti­ty in­to which as­sets of the State of T&T are vest­ed.

CAL is al­so heav­i­ly sup­port­ed by the Gov­ern­ment, with the Min­istry of Fi­nance out­lin­ing in a news re­lease last Oc­to­ber that “it is a fact that over the last nine years, the Min­istry of Fi­nance has tak­en over CAL’s debts and debt ser­vic­ing oblig­a­tions. The min­istry there­fore cov­ers a sig­nif­i­cant por­tion of CAL’s an­nu­al ex­pens­es. In the last four years in par­tic­u­lar, the Min­istry of Fi­nance has pro­vid­ed the air­line with bil­lions of dol­lars in fi­nan­cial sup­port in the af­ter­math of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic. Fur­ther, the Min­istry of Fi­nance con­tin­ues to sub­sidise the air­line to the tune of hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars per year.”

CAL’s busi­ness is, there­fore, the na­tion’s busi­ness.

The air­line trans­ports hun­dreds of thou­sands of pas­sen­gers be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad on an an­nu­al ba­sis, at a sub­sidised cost. Giv­en the vi­tal im­por­tance of trans­porta­tion be­tween the two is­lands, CAL op­er­ates al­most like an es­sen­tial ser­vice to To­bag­o­ni­ans who must trav­el to Trinidad to con­duct busi­ness.

Among its oth­er at­trib­ut­es, CAL, and its pre­de­ces­sor BWIA, have built up rep­u­ta­tions for trans­port­ing pas­sen­gers to their des­ti­na­tions safe­ly.

The cur­rent stew­ards of the air­line—its ex­ec­u­tives, di­rec­tors, the tech­nocrats in the Min­istry of Fi­nance, but al­so the pi­lots, flight at­ten­dants, me­chan­ics and all the com­pa­ny’s em­ploy­ees—must, there­fore, do every­thing in their pow­er to guard the air­line’s rep­u­ta­tion for safe­ty jeal­ous­ly.